WotLK Beta

[grindcore]

Got the email a few weeks after the opt-in. Wondered if it was fake. Confirmed on the forums that it wasn't.

So I'm downloading the client, should be done by morning, copied Grindcore over too :)

[Avoch]

Lucky

[Tiger]

OMG...you rule...

[Bamboocha]

I hate you.

[giga191]

How much are you getting paid?

[grindcore]

So far, it's more like beta testing Blizzard's capability to put all European players on a single server that's situated in the USA :D

Latency isn't that bad, but there's lots of occasional server lag (loot lag etc). Plus, it's hilarious that Blizzard declared English isn't compulsory on public channels because the whole of Europe is on it.

Thus, every time the server freezes, people start shouting in German, French and Russian, and then the Brits join the club, telling them to speak English, and then everyone screams at each other that their language is the best. Can't complain about the drama, it's top-notch.

I won't be adding screenshots or guides here because you can spoil yourself all you want by looking at worldofraids.com and such. I don't have much to add.

But I will generally say that when I ran through Howling Fjord, I was very impressed. It really feels like genuine Northrend, the place you'd expect after seeing it in WC3 and reading the lore. It feels strange, yet not Outlandish strange purple blah blah, but it feels like a harsh version of Azeroth, it's like going back to the start but on a lot more epic scale.

Whereas they haven't much tweaked the graphics engine, they have been a lot more detailed with architecture and generally more intuitive and creative with the landscape. It could be from the lack of final graphical touches, but when I flew on a wind rider over the area, there was this great gorge with a lake in the middle, with little viking styled houses and walkways carved into the mountain hills, waterfalls and dams surrounding the center point of the area, the Utgarde Keep, which stood out massively. With all possible graphic details on max, I generally run a healthy 60-80fps in Shattrath at peak hours, but I got to as low as 35-45 when I feasted on that sight. I hope it won't be a one-timer and they'll do it a lot more. I made lots of screenshots but given that it cuts down the quality, they didn't really come close to explaining the feeling and looks of that place. They're pushing it :>

I thought a lot about whether I'd bother to beta test at all, given that it's a spoiler and I'm ruining the novelty of the game for myself. But then I thought about TBC start, the lag, the hundreds of people camping one quest mob, and I realised, hell, it's gonna be a grind anyway and if I know where to go and what to do without having to waste time on checking it up or searching the quest mob from a vague quest description, it's all the better for me. Besides, I've already encountered numerous quests that have small glitches and bugs or are too time consuming, and if my suggestions and reports are listened to, we'll all have a better game :)

P.S. 51 pt Rogue Combat talent is bugged and not working :( Gotta go for a dagger build, itching to test out those monsters.

[Nikado]

yadda yadda, when do I get a turn on your account?

[Cray]

Thanks, this is an interesting read

[grindcore]

Thanks, this is an interesting read

Thank you! I think I'm going to add more comments as I progress through Northrend, but I'll try not to spoil anything and just give people the general idea of things and speak how things are working beta-wise.

I'd also like to add that as far as I've experienced, you get a lot more "in character" time, as in, you engage in a quest, and lots of events spawn up, more than in TBC, which makes you really feel like your character is in the middle of something big that's inevitable and gives you a moral reason to get involved and it really improves the playing experience.

I haven't yet tried out the Death Knight starting zone, which is said to be an epic experience, but I'll surely get there at one point. There's a fair amount of Death Knights running around in the beta already. Having a Tauren Death Knight steal your pull feels a bit funny. For the moment, getting to see more of Northrend and giving feedback on it seems a more desirable input, as I've decided to play my Rogue as my main char in WotLK as well. :)

[Caras]

Interesting stuff, sounds like you're having fun ;)

A Tauren Death Knight though... that's just wrong.. so wrong lol

[Avoch]

Can you stick any DK related stuff inside quotes/code tags please so I can skip it over? Don't want to know too much before I play one or it'll be TBC start again with me quitting super fast out of boredom :p

[Tiger]

can't wait to try that out...in the meantime my holy priest is making all the important new boss kills in DP...few weeks ago i smited Supremus for 1071 and than he was killed by a tick form someone's SW:P (who was already dead as was 95% of the raid)

To top that i singlehandedly killed Bloodboil with a smite last night :-)

What is the forecast for holy smite-priests?

[grindcore]

Can you stick any DK related stuff inside quotes/code tags please so I can skip it over? Don't want to know too much before I play one or it'll be TBC start again with me quitting super fast out of boredom :p

Can do :) Although as I previously said, I don't think I'll be adding much detailed spoilers here.

[Kjeldoran]

DK's can fly .... ooops soz for the obvious spoiler Avie :D

[Avoch]

There's that incredible sense of humour of yours Kj :D

[grindcore]

I've now completed a fair bit of the Death Knight starting quests, stopping only because the server's gone unstable and it's literally even hard to log on, so I didn't bother anymore for now.

The storyline is very interesting and intriguing. It's so good, it even had me wonder if, in some future expansion, Blizzard would introduce the Scourge side as a playable side, competing against everyone. It definitely has potential, and seeing how well their ideas float when creating something evil, I think it'd be the best thing to happen in this game and give PvP a new start.


There will be mild spoilers below, so if you want to level a Death Knight and don't want to know anything, skip the part in the quote box!




So far, it's been a good ride. The quests have been very well thought out and are fun to do. There are lots and lots of jokes running around with numerous references. One quest called "Grand Theft Palomino" has you steal a horse for future use. Another called "Tonight we dine in..." is an obvious reference to 300. There's a quest that makes you talk to Gothik (a boss from 40-man Naxxramas), and when you start the dialogue, he starts his speech that he used to do when engaged, then "looks through his notes" and apologises for his "old habits".

Another very positive aspect is, the quests are enjoyable and easily completed even when "zerged" by dozens of players. For example, you have to kill and get the head of a named mob, but in reality, anyone can kill it, it just spawns its "remains" and anyone can loot it.

What's been subject to a lot of criticism, the class (as of lvl 57 when I logged off) doesn't really have a spell/skill rotation that you'd expect to be vital to killing the mobs in PvE. You need to use your runes that are on a rather short cooldown, and all your damage dealing abilities are decent and you can spam them in any order and you'll end up killing the enemy in a rather short time period anyway. It's supposed to be a starter thing and it'll get better as you progress and get more skills, but it's really random button mashing at the start.

Rune power that you gain whilst fighting the enemy (pretty much similar to Warrior's rage bar, although a bit different in function) can be used for special abilities, such as Death Coil, which does some good damage.

Another thing is talent building. You start to get talent points for quests at some point, and they come rather quickly. It's rather time consuming to bother to read through all the talent tool tips, so I just went for the "Blood" tree, as it has +2h weapon dmg and +crit talents, and seems to have some nice skills to complement it. Other trees have their "should pick this" talents too, namely +spell dmg and +1h dmg/offhand dmg talents.

The general mood/feeling of the quests is genuine evil at its best, having you kill innocent civilians, with a lot of body parts and bloody carcasses everywhere.

There are a lot of new lore books scattered around the camps, giving some good lore information about the general mindset of the Scourge.

As a class in combat, the Death Knight felt "okay" but nothing spectacular. Bearing in mind I enjoy my Rogue over all classes I've tried, it's a very biased opinion. IMHO it's certainly more entertaining than the Warrior, given that it gets to do a lot without gathering any Rage (Rune power) at all. It also has a very cool "pull" skill that is basically the exact counter of Warrior's charge - it pulls the targeted mob to the Death Knight and gives you extra threat. Definitely a very cool skill, but it has a 30 sec cooldown :/

[Darkblood]

woa sound like wotlk is gonna be kinda cool :P
Was really fun to read that.

[Haldurion]

Thanks for the info Grind, well worth the read :)

[Kjeldoran]

There's that incredible sense of humour of yours Kj :D

Well, then don't create an open goal for me :D

You miss me, don't you? ;)

[Kjeldoran]

No worries Avie, if you want I'll summarize the spoilers from Grindcore ... :)

Btw, I really hope we get a small FA division up and running again as I'm about to get kicked from Apathia (if not already).

rgds Kj

[Tiger]

KJ...you done it again? FA still runs aroudn on alts atm ;-) Maybe apply to Dark Prophecy after all? Get in on some of our new upcoming first kills?

[Kjeldoran]

KJ...you done it again? FA still runs aroudn on alts atm ;-) Maybe apply to Dark Prophecy after all? Get in on some of our new upcoming first kills?

I'll get kicked because I didn't join a single raid yet. Reason:

- Holiday (they were aware of this)
- Raids I joined I was put on reserve
- Only raid I got accepted in got cancelled due to lack of players
- PC is currently screwed (at store atm) ...

Based on these things, they decided it's my fault and therefor should be removed :D

I hope they don't but I'm sure they will, sadly.

Then again, we've also been less tollerant with trialists before and I know, being an officer, that the reasons I just named could sound like excuses ...

rgds Kj

[Bamboocha]

I'll get kicked because I didn't join a single raid yet. Reason:

- Holiday (they were aware of this)
- Raids I joined I was put on reserve
- Only raid I got accepted in got cancelled due to lack of players
- PC is currently screwed (at store atm) ...

Based on these things, they decided it's my fault and therefor should be removed :D

I hope they don't but I'm sure they will, sadly.

Then again, we've also been less tollerant with trialists before and I know, being an officer, that the reasons I just named could sound like excuses ...

rgds Kj

given the fact that i got kicked for no real reason.....

[Avoch]

Well they'll kick you because they know they can find some mindless idiot to fill the spot that will suck their balls just to get into BT/MH for their shinies. That's the problem with WoW in general, no one cares if people change guilds all the time, there's no honour, and when its this close to the expansion with free content that most people don't deserve people will do anything to get at it.

[Kjeldoran]

Well they'll kick you because they know they can find some mindless idiot to fill the spot that will suck their balls just to get into BT/MH for their shinies. That's the problem with WoW in general, no one cares if people change guilds all the time, there's no honour, and when its this close to the expansion with free content that most people don't deserve people will do anything to get at it.

to be fairly honnest, I'd currently also act like a mindless idiot just to get my shinies as I can't say I'll be loyal to any guild until I've been there for quite a while.

I'm still hoping AND counting on FA to reform to a casual 10-20 man guild to do all endgame content in 10 man. With friends having good fun like in the old days.

[grindcore]

Whilst adding no real information, I just have to get my rant off my chest - I haven't bothered to play the Beta at all the last few days. It's not that I don't like beta testing, or I don't have time.

It's even understandable that Blizzard centers all the Beta servers in the US to stay in tight touch with their development crew. Hell, I don't mind the ~300ms ping that you'd expect from a US server. I've had a lot more on Al'Akir on a loaded night. It's just that the EU server is significantly more unstable (albeit running the same build as the US one) and a lot more laggy (not latency, but distinct, a few minutes-lag when looting, accepting quests, etc).

Right now, the EU-Beta forums are flooded with complaints about not really getting to test the content because of dozens of technical server issues, and it seems like the Blizzard EU "community manager" doesn't really know what to say about it because he's just as "in the dark" as the beta testers. Sad but true :P

[Kjeldoran]

Fucking dickheads in Apthia, really ...

he puts me on reserve for raids yet kicks me because I didn't join > 50% raids .... well DOH !!!

Also now he claims my gear is not good enough for BT and he wonders how a CL from a guild that started raiding BT does not have many Bt epics yet ... big fucking lol tbh ...

And then to top ALL stupidity, they are currently recruiting a new mage with PREFERABLY BT gear, but anything less is also acceptable ....